GIS total newb needs....

jennastics

Posted 06 February 2009 - 03:26 PM

jennastics

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New Member

17 posts

Location:Minneapolis

United States

Hi. I'm new to the board and to GIS. I work with Global Mapper right now... I know, I know... and need to upgrade to ArcGIS. I need "base maps" that are scanned in pdfs of plat maps that are put together and I assign projection data to them. I'm able to do this in Global Mapper VERY easily but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to do it in Arc.

BioGeoMan

Posted 06 February 2009 - 05:44 PM

BioGeoMan

Master Contributor

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188 posts

Gender:Male

Location:Albuquerque, NM

United States

Your best bet (that I am familiar with) is to add the scanned image into ArcMap as a tiff or jpeg. Add referencing data such as aerial imagery or a topo that is georeferenced correctly. Use the "Georeferencing" tool to add reference points, meaning click on a part of the tiff that corresponds to a point on the georeferenced data and the software will rectify the image to meet the georeferenced data. Note, you should use at least 3 points, but the more points the better without raising your error value too much, it is a balance between the number of reference points and a relatively low error value.

Georeferencing tool can be accessed by right clicking anywhere in the gray space on the toolbars and choosing the Georeferencing tool.

There should be some tutorials or help items on the ESRI site to take you through this process step by step. I imagine it is not as easy as Global Mapper...nothing in ArcView is